WHAT IS ORDINARY TIME?

 

What is Ordinary Time?

    I am sometimes asked by people what I mean when I refer to, "ordinary time" as the Catholic Church reckons it. Occasionally, these questions even come from Catholics! While it is pretty straightforward, it can maybe be a little confusing for some folks.
    I found this today, and I thought it may go a long way to help explain it. 

    




















The Church Relies on Liturgy
To grasp the meaning of, "ordinary time," there is a fundamental backbone to the Church that must be first understood. This foundation is known as the, "liturgy." This is not unique to the Catholic Church - all churches have their own liturgies i nsome form.
So, here's what that means:

liturgy /lĭt′ər-jē/

noun

1. A prescribed form or set of forms for public religious worship.

2. In the Roman Catholic Church, it includes all forms and services in any language, in any part of the world, for the celebration of the Mass.

Excerpted from the American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition


Therefore, the entire year is set to a rhythm of liturgical, "seasons," which themselves reflect the rhythm of life — with celebrations, anniversaries, memorials, etc., all maturing across an entire year of quiet growth. [1]

Ordinary Time, in this liturgical context, comes from the word, "ordinal," meaning, "ordered or numbered time"...think of it as the measured march of days across the Church year.

As such, it is divided and celebrated in two segments:

1. From the Monday following the Baptism of Our Lord, up to Ash Wednesday (early January to about mid-February)

2. From Pentecost Monday to the First Sunday of Advent (late May/early June, to early December)

These segments are determined by how the calendar falls, but "Ordinary Time" is largest season of the Liturgical Year.

Ordinary Time Has Its Own Color
If you attend a Mass during ordinary time, you are likely to see the attending clergy wearing vestments in the color green. This is the traditional color of hope and growth, and tso the Church counts the thirty-three or thirty-four Sundays of Ordinary Time with this in mind. She invites her children to meditate upon the whole mystery of Christ — his life, miracles and teachings – in the hope of his Resurrection and looking towards our own growth in life with Him.

We also like to see our faith journey, our maturing in spiritual life and increasing faith, as descending the great mountain peaks of Easter and Christmas in order to "pasture" in the vast verdant meadows of, "tempus per annum," or Ordinary Time.

Sunday by Sunday, the Pilgrim Church marks her journey through the 'tempus per annum,' as she processes through time toward eternity. [2]
For a penetrating look at how the seasons of the year interlock with the seasons of our lives, read Dr. Jeffrey Mirus' article. "Seasons: The Lesson of Life."

Scripture and the Liturgy

In her revisions of the Liturgy, the Church has always sought to maintain the pre-eminence of Sunday, that feast day par excellence, over every other feast day. [3]

Recognizing, too, that Our Lord is really present when Sacred Scripture is read during the Liturgy, she has opened up the, "treasures of the Bible so that richer fare may be provided for the faithful at the table of God's Word." [4]

To encourage her children to have a, "warm and living love for Scripture," [5] the Church has enlarged the Sunday Lectionary so that the various books of the New Testaments are read roughly from beginning to end over a period of weeks, and the synoptic Gospels are read in a 3 year cycle

Year A – Matthew
Year B – Mark
Year C – Luke

Old Testament readings and Psalms are chosen to tie into the Gospel passages, and to emphasize the prophetic fulfillment of the Old Testament, in the New. The revised weekday lectionary for Ordinary Time complements the Sunday lectionary with its 2-year cycle of readings presenting all the major portions of the Bible, and a 1-year cycle for the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke.
In short, any Catholic that attends Mass regulary, will make a journey through, and across, Sacred Sripture. It is literally built into the entire Mass!


Feast Days

The Church always insists that the feasts that commemorate the Mysteries of Salvation take precedence. However, the Church also includes the feast days of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the saints in the liturgical calendar.

"By inserting into the annual cycle the commemoration of the martyrs and other saints on the occasion of their anniversaries, The Church proclaims the Easter mystery of those who lived IN Christ, and who suffered with Him and are now glorified.' (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 102)
When celebrated in the true spirit of the liturgy, the commemoration of the saints does not obscure the centrality of Christ; rather it extols and amplifies it…"


"The intrinsic relationship between the glory of the saints and that of Christ is built into the very arrangement of the liturgical year, and is expressed most eloquently in the fundamental and sovereign character of Sunday as the Lord's Day." [6]

The Easter Mystery Celebrated in Ordinary Time

Parents are challenged to keep the Easter mystery alive [7] in their families throughout the season of Ordinary Time; to focus on the mysteries of Christ which the Church sets before them in the weekly Mass readings and to apply those readings to their daily lives.

In this way, faith will bear fruit within their homes, intensifying through the fertile weeks of Ordinary time until its conclusion, the crowning feast of Christ the King.


Joyful Expectation at Year's End

At the close of every Liturgical Year, we look forward with renewed hope to Christ's coming again in glory to reign as Lord forever.
For it is Jesus Christ we seek when we strive to live the Liturgical Year with the Church. He is the "Lord of time; he is its beginning and its end; every year, every day and every moment are embraced by his Incarnation and resurrection, and thus become part of the 'fullness of time'." [8]


End notes

1 Dies Domini, #76
"But there is another rhythm which soon established itself: the annual liturgical cycle.

Human psychology in fact desires the celebration of anniversaries, associating the return of dates and seasons with the remembrance of past events."

2 Dies Domini, #37
"As the Church journeys through time, the reference to Christ's Resurrection and the weekly recurrence of this solemn memorial help to remind us of the pilgrim and eschatological character of the People of God.
Sunday after Sunday, the Church moves toward the final "Lord's Day," that Sunday which knows no end. The expectation of Christ's coming is inscribed in the very mystery of the Church and is evidenced in every Eucharistic celebration.
But, with its specific remembrance of the glory of the Risen Christ, the Lord's Day recalls with greater intensity the future glory of this "return". This makes Sunday the day on which the Church, showing forth more clearly her identity as "Bride," anticipates in some sense the eschatological reality of the heavenly Jerusalem. Gathering her children into the Eucharistic assembly and teaching them to wait for the "divine Bridegroom," she engages in a kind of "exercise of desire," receiving a foretaste of the joy of the new heavens and new earth, when the holy city, the new Jerusalem, will come down from God, "prepared as a bride adorned for her husband: (Rev 21:2)."

3 Sacrosanctum Concillium #108

"The minds of the faithful must be directed primarily toward the feasts of the Lord, whereby the Mysteries of Salvation are celebrated in the course of the year.
Therefore, the proper of the time shall be given the preference which is its due over the feasts of the saints, so that the entire cycle of the mysteries of salvation may be suitably recalled.

4 Sacrosanctum Concilium #51

5 Ibid, # 24

6 Dies Domini, #78

7 Sacrosanctum Concillium, #106

"By a tradition handed down from the apostles which took its origin from the very day of Christ's resurrection, the Church celebrates the Paschal Mystery every eighth day; with good reason this, then bears the name of the Lord's day or Sunday.
For on this day Christ's faithful are bound to come together into one place so that, by hearing the word of God and taking part in the Eucharist, they may call to mind the passion, the Resurrection, and the Glorification of our Lord Jesus Christ, and may thank God who, "has begotten them again, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, unto a living hope."

8 Easter Vigil Liturgy, Blessing of the Paschal Candle.

Adapted courtesy of CatholicCulture.org:
https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=12022



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